While engaged in this work I frequently had to walk ten miles to Sorel Mountain, one of my appointments, which was a part of this circuit. My salary was indeed very small, but they fed me and cared for me the best they could, and God did the rest. I closed my work here with twenty-three converts added to the church. As I write these lines, I look back to see the ravages of time and what they have wrought. Those who were received into the church by me at that time, with very few exceptions, have finished their battle of life and completed their labors, long since, and have gone home to render a better service than they could have rendered here.
I made improvements on the Church buildings of the circuit and was able to make a good report to the Conference which met at Philadelphia. At this conference I was received into membership by Bishop Paul Quinn. It was here that I made for the first time, my acquaintance with Dr. B. T. Tanner, Rev. T. G. Stewart, Rev. Frisby Cooper and others. Rev. Joshua Woodland was my presiding elder. I was permitted to attend the Lincoln University, in Chester County, Pennsylvania. I was supported by Mr. Amos Clark Junion of Elizabeth, N. J., and preached on Sundays in the Siloam Presbyterian church. Here I made the acquaintance of a local preacher, Rev. David Croshon, of the A. M. E. Church and Brother Scisco from whom I learned a great deal about church work. Being wholly inexperienced and poorly educated, I felt the curse of the regime of slavery, although I had never been a slave. I longed for the equipment that comes from a thorough education and realized that if in some way I did not educate myself, I could never amount to much. So it is hard for me at my time of life although a closer student than ever, to understand or to be in sympathy with any preacher who in his ignorance, is satisfied to remain so. There is something sadly lacking in such a man and I greatly fear those qualities without which no man is either acceptable to God or to the church, as a minister of the Gospel.
BISHOP WILLIAM PAUL QUINN
Who received me into the Conference
I realized also that in addition to my own weakness that this world was no friend to grace to help me on to God. I had many foes within and without me to overcome.
In June, 1870, I was requested by Bishop J. P. Campbell to report at the Philadelphia Conference, he having, in the interval, taken me up and sent me to the Pennington circuit. I reported at the conference and was transferred to the South under the care of Bishop John M. Brown. I was sent to Pulaski, Tenn. This was about the time that the Ku Klux Klan was having its sway in the south. These men were engaged in every kind of intimidation and cruelty in order to keep the Negroes from voting the Republican ticket. They would kill, torture, or do anything that came into mind in order that their purpose might be realized. At this time there were many Colored people holding office in the South. The unrest and the mental suffering of these times were as severe a strain almost as the period of the war itself. When I arrived at Pulaski, Tenn. I was introduced to what I might expect in the South. I presented my check to the baggage master for my trunk. He refused to take the trunk off the car, but threw it upon the platform in the roughest manner. A White man standing near, saw that I was very much surprised at such treatment and approaching me, asked if I did not like that kind of treatment and that if I did not he would proceed to give me some more of it. I told him that I had made no complaints at all. He asked me where I was going and what I was doing, and I was glad to slip away and find the steward of the church. I related these things to him and he told me that I had acted wisely in being calm and making no fuss over the matter. He told me that the White folks were Ku Kluxing the Colored people without mercy and going out of their way to find provocations for such devilish work. The steward told me that I would have to be very careful as a minister in and out of the pulpit, that the Klu Klux Klan was especially after the preachers to force them to use their influence to make the Negroes vote the Democratic ticket in elections.
They found me a boarding place with a Mrs. Batts. I found that the Colored men of this community were doing good business. One was a cotton merchant, a Mr. Harris, I remember. I was greatly assisted in this charge by my local preachers. They were more experienced than I in the work of the pastorate and I felt them to be my superiors in everything. The meetings were good. Souls were converted and many were added to the church. There was not much money in circulation and the salary was small. They used cards to trade with, postage stamps, and whatever of value would be accepted or exchanged for what you wanted. I remember one night the Klu Klux Klan came to the house of one of my members, a Mr. Pleasant Rector, called him to the door and shot him down as if he had been a dog. His wife and children were frightened almost to death. One of his daughters asked me what she must do. I could tell her that nothing would help such dreadful matters, so we all went to the church and prayed over the matter, and I consoled them as best I could. These were dreadful times. The hatred and the revenge of the Southern White man who had been whipped by his Northern White Brother, were now visited upon the still helpless race. We had to receive the very wounds which the Southerners would loved to have visited upon his White brothers, and which they tried to visit upon them in war, but failed. We did a good work here along temperance and missionary lines.
In September, 1873, the Conference convened at Memphis, Tenn. This was the annual conference of the A. M. E. Church and it convened at the St. Andrews Chapel of that city. Rev. B. L. Brooks, preached the opening sermon. The Bishop, John M. Brown, was belated, so the conference proceeded with business, having made Elder Page Tyler chairman, and Elder Brooks, secretary. The regular routine of business was purposed. Bishop Brown arrived on the fourth day, having gotten his dates mixed, then he was afraid that at that time it was unwise to hold any public meetings owing to the presence of yellow fever in the city. The Conference remained in session until it had completed its business. Yellow fever at this time was raging in Memphis. A friend told me that he stood at a street corner and counted seventy-four funerals as they passed. In the house where I was stopping, there was a yellow fever case in the room next to mine. The meeting of the Conference in Memphis was a very successful one considering the obstacles contended against.
The following Conference held a year later, was in Nashville, Tenn. This Conference was presided over by Bishop Brown. At this conference several were ordained as deacons, among them myself. While at Nashville, the Conference visited Fisk University and also the Tennessee college.
During this time I remained at Campbell Chapel, Pulaski, Tenn. We bought ground and made brick and quarried stone, for the basement of a church. There were about fifty members added to the church.